Browsing museum image collections on a multi-touch table Gianluigi Ciocca a,n , Paolo Olivo b,1 , Raimondo Schettini a a Dipartimento di Informatica Sistemistica e Comunicazione (DISCo) – Universit  a degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy b Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) – IRCICA, Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France article info Article history: Received 26 September 2011 Accepted 26 September 2011 Recommended by: D. Shasha Available online 4 October 2011 Keywords: Image browsing User interaction Multi-touch Interactive table Image clustering abstract In this paper we present a multi-touch tabletop system for browsing image databases, conceived for museums and art gallery exhibitions. The system exploits an innovative image browsing paradigm and image retrieval functionalities to perform natural and intuitive user interaction: users can explore the image database by handling digital pictures by means of touch gestures or by the use of a predetermined set of physical objects; once one of these objects is placed on the table, it is automatically recognized and the associated function is triggered. The set of objects and the function associations can be dynamically configured. An innovative feature of our application is that users can interactively create and manipulate image clusters where images are grouped according to their pictorial similarity. This is achieved by placing one or more specific tangible objects on the table surface. The system has been evaluated on a collection of photos organized in groups according to the UNESCO picture categories. The usability tests, performed considering different user categories, show that users consider the application to be attractive and interesting. & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Museums and archives call for methods and tools to navigate their catalogues and to provide facilities for searching, browsing, clustering and visualizing different kinds of visual data and related information. In designing a system able to manage such data, several problems have to be addressed. The most relevant are:  which navigation paradigms should be offered to users?  how can non-expert users interact with the system in an intuitive way?  can these paradigms be appreciated also by experts? Given the large audience and diversity of the visitors, museums are an interesting target where interactive technologies can be experimented. The kind of informa- tion displayed in the exhibitions allows the design and testing of different interaction paradigms, and this explains the interest in developing systems and creative applications that allow visitors, curators and artists to effectively manage, manipulate and explore information. Information exploration may include data browsing or searching for a specific element [1]. In particular, museum visitors often do not have clearly defined goals in mind, but they casually explore repositories with respect to personal interests. For this reason interactive applications must be designed considering how to facilitate free and casual exploration as much as possible, rather than giving them predefined and structured information. Moreover, we must take into account that the possible audience of the museum exhibitions is heterogeneous with diverse educational backgrounds, experience towards technology, and not all people are computer literate. This implies that Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infosys Information Systems 0306-4379/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.is.2011.09.009 n Corresponding author. Tel.: þ39 0264487922 E-mail addresses: ciocca@disco.unimib.it (G. Ciocca), paolo.olivo@inria.fr (P. Olivo), schettini@disco.unimib.it (R. Schettini). 1 The work was done while this author was working at DISCo. Information Systems 37 (2012) 169–182